It is no secret that Congress is one seriously screwed up institution. It's members instead of legislating justly and honestly are primarily concerned with the protection of their incumbency. This leads to distortion, corruption and out of control pork barrel politics.

It is time that we change the system. And passing another Congressional Ethics bill is not going to change anything any more that the last dozen or so have. What we need to do is change the way we elect members of the Senate. (I'll think up something to fix the House another time, I only get an hour for lunch.)

Here's my proposal. Every Senatorial election cycle, the names of the states who's senators are up for re-election are placed in a hat. The governors of those states come to Washington and draw a name from the hat. Their state will elect the Senators to represent the state who's name they drew.

Pork would go back to being just the other white meat. There's no reason to send pork back to your home state because they are not going to be voting for you. There's no way to know which state you're going to have to campaign in so there's no where to send pork to help you get elected.

It would also greatly increase the turnover in the Senate and eliminate the entrenched power of long term incumbency. How much of a chance do you think Harry Reid or John Kerry would have if they had to stand for election in say Texas? That may seem a bit unfair, but remember there is every possibility that the Senators from Oklahoma could be voted on by the people of Massachusetts.

The overall ideological composition of the Senate probably wouldn't  change that much. Just as many Senators would be elected by red states and blue states as happens today.

There may, of course, be some animosity over the representation elected by one state for another. And there may be the temptation for the electorate of one state to try to "stick it to another." But what goes around comes around, so they will learn to be more judicious.

I know it's not a perfect system, but it's probably not that much worse than what we have now.

Posted by: Stephen Macklin at 12:40 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment